Webpage Layout

Webpage layout is about creating the perfect layout for your web pages. One method you will need to use is to have your structure identical throughout your web site. This is a great technique to make browsing your web site an enjoyable experience.

The web page layout elements include:

Background image - make sure you don’t use a background image that stands out. Don’t use one because you have purchased new software and it is a novelty to try and play with and do something different.

Color - use the correct shades for your web site and don’t use colors that really stand out unless you want to frighten away your visitors.

Navigation Links - My advice for you is to place these in the one area of your webpage layout and not to move them from that location. Traditionally the best place to have the navigation links are on the top of a webpage layout or the left hand side.

With my experience I found that the navigation links should never be located on the right hand side of a web page layout because your web site visitors have all different screen resolution settings and if you do this your navigation links might not be visible unless your website visitors scroll across the webpage.

Lets take a look at an example. Imagine that your table on a web page layout has been designed at 950 pixels by 950 pixels and your screen resolution is set at 1280 pixels x 1024 pixels.

You stand in awe how wonderful your webpage layout looks and how you think you have out smarted everyone by being different because your navigation links are on the right hand side and are visible.

On your computer it looks wonderful however imagine you have a visitor to your web site and that  visitors screen resolution is set at 800 pixels by 600 pixels.

Can you view your web site correctly with your current layout?

No- because your navigation links are hidden (remember the visitorsscreen resolution is set at 800 pixels wide which means 150 pixels of your web site is hidden which appears on the far right hand side and contains the navigation links).

For your visitors to see the navigation links they needto scroll the webpage across towards the right so your navigation linkscan become visible.

You might be thinking ah we are in the new millennium surely Technology has changed and there is scripting to detect and change the layout for my visitors. Yes there is scripting that can do this however scripting relies on a persons web browser to work properly so it’s a chance and a risk I would not personally take with my layout.

When you design a web site your target should be the majority of people searching online hence always keep your web site design simple with a great layout.